Labour Britain Research Articles

Deliberative multiculturalism in New Labour's Britain

The aim of this paper is to examine the principles that New Labour has employed in its citizenship and multicultural policies in Britain, and to clarify theoretical locations as well as philosophical rationales of those principles. By deliberative multiculturalism, I mean a set of policies and discourses of New Labour about citizenship and multicultural issues, which emphasizes rational dialogue and mutual respect with firmly guaranteed political rights especially for minorities. New Labour tries to go beyond liberal and republican citizenship practice through enhancing deliberation, the origin of which goes back to the British tradition of parliamentary sovereignty. It also attempts to achieve a one-nation out of cultural cleavages, shifting its focus from redistribution with social rights to multicultural deliberation with political rights. I organize my discussion with a focus on the difference between two theoretical concepts: the relationship between cultural rights and individual equality, and the relationship between national boundaries and global belonging. In the concluding section, I explain three positive developments of New Labour's approach and also four limitations it has faced.

SOCIAL POLITICS IN A TRANSOCEANIC WORLD IN THE EARLY COLD WAR YEARS

ABSTRACTThis article argues that those termed ‘liberals’ in the United States had the opportunity in the late 1940s to use overseas case studies to reshape the ramshackle political agenda of the New Deal along more specifically social democratic lines, but that they found it impossible to match interest in the wider world with a concrete programme to overcome tension between left-wing politics and the emerging anti-totalitarianism of the Cold War. The American right, by contrast, conducted a highly organized publicity drive to provide new meaning for their anti-statist ideology in a post-New Deal, post-isolationist United States by using perceived failures of welfare states overseas as domestic propaganda. The examples of Labour Britain after 1945 and Labour New Zealand both provided important case studies for American liberals and conservatives, but in the Cold War it was the American right who would benefit most from an ideologically driven repackaging of overseas social policy for an American audience.

Experiential knowledge challenges ‘normality’ and individualized citizenship: towards ‘another way of being’

This paper draws on the narratives of parents of disabled babies in order to conceptualize enabling care. The analysis emerges from the Sheffield site of an ESRC research project ‘Parents, professionals and disabled babies: identifying enabling care’, which is being undertaken by the Universities of Sheffield and Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne. In New Labour Britain individualized citizenship and self‐sufficiency are upheld as the embodiment of ‘the good life’. A culture of individualized citizenship obliges citizens to strive towards maximum independence, interpreted narrowly as self‐sufficiency, and acts to devalue the lives of some disabled children and their parents. In the area of disability this reinforces the individual model of disability and fails to properly value experiential knowledge acquired in the private sphere. This paper suggests that parents are engaging in reflection that counters hegemonic understandings by embracing alternative narratives that recognize diversity whilst questioning narrowly conceived interpretations of normality. This leads to the reconstruction of parental identities through discourses shaped by mutuality and interdependence.

Prolonged labour: the slow birth of New Labour Britain

Prolonged labour: the slow birth of New Labour Britain

Lesbian and Gay Politics and Participation in New Labour's Britain

This article draws on a two-year ESRC-funded research project on lesbian and gay equality in British local government to explore the possibilities for lesbian and gay politics and participation in New Labour's Britain. It is argued that in the absence of any explicit central government policy supporting lesbian and gay equalities, UK local authorities and community actors are required to act strategically and creatively with available policy discourses and initiatives to create spaces for their purposes. The effectiveness of such strategies, and decisions about which strategies to pursue, are also very much dependent on and affected by local political, cultural, and religious contexts and history.

Public Values of Parenting and Partnering: Voluntary Organizations and Welfare Politics in New Labour's Britain

This article provides an analysis of the values associated with parenting and partnering, comparing those of New Labour with those of national voluntary organizations. It begins with an analysis of New Labour's policies around parenting and partnering, explaining the new salience that voluntary organizations have acquired under New Labour governance. It then draws on a qualitative study to provide an analysis of three main value discourses around welfare articulated by national voluntary organizations: welfare as care and well-being, welfare as social justice and equality, and welfare as social investment and then discusses the challenges these pose to New Labour.

On-line Citizenship: Consultation and Participation in New Labour's Britain and Beyond

This article looks critically at how the Labour Government in the United Kingdom is using technology to connect with citizens. Although the UK Online and Citizen's Portal initiative may improve the level of service in transactions between government and citizens it is argued that such an approach misses out on the possibilities of using technology to re-invigorate democracy by creating a new public space where participatory decision making can enhance a wider project of democratic renewal. After reviewing briefly the background of government using technology, the article examines ideas of participatory democracy and endorses a normative ideal of democracy as political communication within a model of democratic process where citizens must engage with one another and with government in a genuinely neutral public space. The potential of technology to enhance democratic decision making is reviewed and a model of participatory decision making for computer support is outlined. This is followed by an overview of the range of computer support tools that are available to develop such a model.

What's left?: Labour Britain and the socialist tradition

What's left?: Labour Britain and the socialist tradition

J. FYRTH (ed.), Labour's High Noon. The Government and the Economy 1945–51, J. FYRTH (ed.), Labour's Promised Land? Culture and Society in Labour Britain 1945–51, S. FIELDING, P. THOMPSON and N. TIRATSOO, England Arise! The Labour Party and Popular Politics in 1940s Britain and S. BROOKE (ed.), Reform and Reconstruction. Britain after the War, 1945–51

Journal Article J. FYRTH (ed.), Labour's High Noon. The Government and the Economy 1945–51, J. FYRTH (ed.), Labour's Promised Land? Culture and Society in Labour Britain 1945–51, S. FIELDING, P. THOMPSON and N. TIRATSOO, England Arise! The Labour Party and Popular Politics in 1940s Britain and S. BROOKE (ed.), Reform and Reconstruction. Britain after the War, 1945–51 Get access John Marriott John Marriott Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar History Workshop Journal, Volume 43, Issue 1, SPRING 1997, Pages 258–266, https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/1997.43.258 Published: 01 January 1997

Reinterpreting the convict labour market

The convicts transported to NSW between 1817 and 1840 were young, fit, highly literate and brought occupational skills which were broadly representative of the British and Irish working classes. In the colonial labour market where convicts were coerced, more labour was forthcoming and at a lower wage than in a free labour market. The assignment of convict labour in the colony was efficient; skilled urban and construction tradesmen were employed in the same jobs in NSW as they had held in Britain. Domestic servants and unskilled urban workers whose skills were not suited to the needs of the colony experienced job restructuring. The organization of convict workers into teams and gangs in Australia was similar to the way work was organized in free labour Britain, and a mbc of incentives and rewards characterized the extraction of work from convicts. The human capital of the transportees and the labour system within which they worked help to explain the rapid growth of the colonial economy before 1840.

A Labour Britain, NATO and the Bomb

A Labour Britain, NATO and the Bomb

Book reviews : Renewal: Labour's Britain in the 1980s Gerald Kaufman (ed) Penguin, 1983, 201 pp. £2.50

Book reviews : Renewal: Labour's Britain in the 1980s Gerald Kaufman (ed) Penguin, 1983, 201 pp. £2.50

Renewal: Labour's Britain in the 1980s

Renewal: Labour's Britain in the 1980s

The Welfare State in Historical Perspective

Thephrase “welfare state” is of recent origin. It was first used to describe Labour Britain after 1945. From Britain the phrase made its way round the world. It was freely employed, usually but not exclusively by politicians and journalists, in relation to diverse societies at diverse stages of development. Historians also took over the phrase. Attempts were made to re-write nineteenth and twentieth century history, particularly British history, in terms of the “origins” and “development” of a “welfare state”.